


Both Alike in Dignity

by Siria



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-20
Updated: 2009-01-20
Packaged: 2017-10-03 21:16:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's an unexpected lull in the rhythms of the city—no stacks of paperwork or outbreaks of minor inter-departmental hostilities this Wednesday morning, no new intergalactic war either—so John makes a command decision after a run with Ronon and breakfast with Teyla and Jennifer and heads back to his quarters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Both Alike in Dignity

**Author's Note:**

> For Cate. Thanks to Jenn for betaing.

There's an unexpected lull in the rhythms of the city—no stacks of paperwork or outbreaks of minor inter-departmental hostilities this Wednesday morning, no new intergalactic war either—so John makes a command decision after a run with Ronon and breakfast with Teyla and Jennifer and heads back to his quarters. He's got a very important backlog of _Ultimate Spider-Man_ to work through, after all, and so John finishes his coffee stretched out on his bed, socked toes wriggling in comfort while Peter Parker takes on all comers in what John, personally, has always thought is a very snazzy outfit.

He's so absorbed in one particularly technicolour explosion that he doesn't hear it at first—a faint scraping that sounds like something being dragged over metal and stone; a quiet noise that might be someone muttering. John cocks his head and listens, but the noise stops as suddenly as it had started. He blinks and shakes his head, but barely has he turned to a new page when it starts again. John looks under the bed, but the dust bunnies haven't become sentient and unionised yet; when the noise gets a little louder, he wills the door to his quarters open, but the hallway outside is empty and still.

John scratches at the back of his neck. Maybe Carter's right—he does need a vacation ("And no, John, 'blowing the shit out of Wraith' doesn't count."). Or maybe just a nap. He ambles back over to his bed and is just about to pull the covers back when he hears a distant, wavery voice calling, "Johhhhn. Joooooohhhhhnn."

John jumps, and looks around the room, and then peers with great suspicion at the copy of _A Christmas Carol_ that's sitting beneath his well-thumbed copy of _War and Peace. It's not even December_!, he thinks.

"Joohhhhn," he hears once more—and this time John realises that the voice is coming from outside the room. From out on the balcony, and he steps out into the freshening Lantean breeze, drawing his sidearm as he goes—out into the place where he goes sometimes to drink a beer and watch the sun set over the city's spires, the place that he appreciates because it's at least a good twenty five feet of sheer drop from him and anyone who wants to cause him trouble—but not, he quickly realises, from Rodney.

"_Rodney_?" John says, feeling his brows scrunched up in disbelief, because of all the beings he possibly expected to see clinging to a long line of knotted sheets and slowly hauling themselves up to his room—a space vampire; a crack force of Genii operatives; Mrs Finkelstein, his third grade teacher—Rodney was the least likely of all of them.

"Well?" Rodney snaps, peering up at him. The wind is ruffling his hair, giving him the look of an enraged hedgehog. "Come on, chop chop, stop standing there like some kind of love-struck mooncalf and give me a hand up, this is hell on my lower back."

"I—uh–"

"And put that gun away first," Rodney grunts as he starts to haul himself up over the railings, "I do not want you to shoot yourself in the foot again."

"_Almost_," John said, "I _almost_ did, and that was one time!"

Rodney does not seem inclined to listen to his (very logical) defence however, and so John settles for holstering his sidearm and tugging on Rodney until they both tumble backwards onto the hard, sun-warmed balcony floor. Rodney's a heavy weight on top of him, his knee pressed against John's thigh and an elbow in John's gut, and _honestly_, John thinks as he tries to suck in a breath, _what the goddamned hell—_

When he's once more getting enough oxygen to his brain to allow him to focus, John blinks up at Rodney and, unable to decide between _what_ and _why_, settles for a string of curses filthy enough to have made his squad back in Afghanistan stare at him in awe. Rodney, unperturbed, beams down at him, his cheeks flushed pink from the cool air and the exertion. "Now, now," he says, pressing a quick kiss to John's open mouth before sitting up, "this is what you wanted, after all."

"I—what?" After all this time, John still can't follow all the convolutions of Rodney's brain, and he's not even going to attempt it this time. "Explain."

"You said you wanted more gestures!" Rodney says, one finger held aloft in earnest punctuation.

John lets his head drop back against the floor, once but hard. "I meant, like, bring me a _coffee_ once in a while, not go dangling out of windows like a—"

"It's in _Shakespeare,_ you philistine, it's _romantic_. And I am one-eighth French-Canadian, which means that I'm all about the _grande passion_." Should a researcher find out a way to harness the kinetic potential of Rodney's smugness, a small hamlet could be powered with the force of his smile right now.

John stares at him. "You do know that Romeo and Juliet died horrible deaths, right?"

Rodney flaps a hand airily. "Details. Also, you're totally Juliet in this analogy, you realise. I did have a more in-depth textual analysis prepared, but—"

John could let him go on. He could. But he sat through enough of Shakespeare in eleventh grade to last him a lifetime, and why rehash the paper-dry drama of what people lost because they could not speak when he could have this—Rodney's hot, wet mouth against his; the pressure of Rodney's body against his making John's back arch high and tight; all the ways a seeking pilgrim's hand can touch.


End file.
